


Apprivoiser

by Shayvaalski



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemon, Crossover, Daemons, Dubious Consent, F/M, Female Sebastian, Gay Male Character, Genderswap, Jim is a Bad Consent Bear, Lesbian Character, Porn, Porn With Plot, Queer Het, Sexual Coercion, Sexuality, anti-diogenes, heed the warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-21
Updated: 2013-01-21
Packaged: 2017-11-26 07:46:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/648214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shayvaalski/pseuds/Shayvaalski
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bastia Moran doesn’t see Jim’s daemon for a long time, even after they start working together regularly. This is isn't entirely surprising; Jim is a private man, and a secretive one. </p><p>This is not really how she expected to meet it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Apprivoiser

**Author's Note:**

> Genderswapped Sebastian, boundary-pushing Jim, and Pullman-esque daemons; you can thank the anti-diogenes writing weekend for the entirety of this, although it's been bouncing around in my head for a long time. 
> 
>  
> 
> It is exceedingly filthy, and contains some moments of very dubious consent.

Bastia doesn’t see Jim’s daemon until they’ve been working together for almost a year. She knows it’s there; occasionally she catches a glimpse of inhuman movement beneath the line of his suit. Which is a relief, because if she’s being honest with herself Jim is already unnerving enough. Fern is of the opinion they should just quit; Bastia points out the kind of consequences that is likely to incur and gets no answer from her daemon, just a shiver of the thick gray fur over her shoulders.

And then Jim calls her in to see him after a job, when Bastia has only just finished scrubbing the blood out from under her nails. It wasn’t strictly _required_ to make the killing up close, but she likes to make things personal. The boss seems to appreciate it. So she whistles to Fern, who is patiently licking a streak of red off her hindquarters, and dries her hands off on her thighs, and they go down the filthy little hallway towards the jarringly refined room Jim calls his office. Bastia no longer bothers with wondering why the fuck Jim hasn’t bothered to fancy up the whole building instead of just the three rooms they use, because he has his own reasons for everything he does and asking just ends up with him giggling and her frustrated. 

Fern says something, badger-gruff, about hoping she’ll actually ask for some time off, Bastia, you know Augusta and Lise miss us.

“My sisters can manage by themselves.” Bastia runs a hand through her blond hair so it stands up short and spiky, then knocks on the half-open door.

“Moran. Come in.” Jim sounds unusually calm today, and although Bastia is never relaxed in his presence (something around the eyes and in the twisting of his wrist discourages her from dropping her guard) she isn’t expecting anything out of the ordinary. Orders, probably, and then she can get the fuck out of that room and go have a drink, wash the taste of copper from her mouth. 

Jim is standing at the window, and Bastia thinks for a moment she can see a flash of bright color at his neck before he turns with his head tipped a little on one side to look at her. She stops just outside of arm’s reach and stands in parade rest, Fern sitting at her feet with forepaws close together. 

“You wanted to see me, boss.” 

“Mm.” Jim stalks towards her, and then around Bastia in a small circle. He’s vibrating with something she thinks is probably excitement, or anticipation. Fern shifts, just the tiniest bit, and Jim stops, looking down at her. Then he smiles. 

If Bastia had been expecting it she might have been able to brace, hold firm against the shock and nausea, but Jim is so fast and so casual that when he drops to one knee and strokes the top of Fern’s head Bastia makes a strangled sound. Fern is frozen in place, wide-eyed, teeth bared. 

“Isn’t that _just_ like you, Moran?” asks Jim, without seeming to notice them, and scratches behind her daemon’s ears. “Tough little brute but touch you right and you’re soft as anything.” 

“Let me go,” Bastia rasps out, and grabs for him blindly, her hand closing on the fabric of his suit jacket. She yanks Jim up—woman or not she’s stronger and bigger—and shoves him against a wall, shivering all over. He giggles, and then Bastia goes utterly cold, the pit of her stomach a small sick roll of horror. 

There is a brightly-scaled snake wound around her wrist, its head swaying very slightly, mouth open to show its fangs. 

“This is Kesh.” Jim’s voice is utterly even and very amused, even though she is all but choking him. “Be careful. She bites.” 

 

***

 

Bastia is flat on her back, staring a ceiling she can’t see through the absolute darkness of the room. Blackout curtains come standard with all of Jim’s buildings. Fern is curled against her chest, still as death except for the occasional tremor that translates down through Bastia until both of them are shivering. The woman digs her fingers into the ratel’s fur, holds so tight her bones ache and several hairs part company with skin. 

Fern has her eyes closed and her head pointing away from her person’s so they can’t lock gazes even accidentally, but when she tells Bastia that they should go her voice is shockingly calm. Bastia shakes her head, because they can’t. They really can’t, Jim has eyes everywhere and Bastia _likes_ being in one piece. She may be vain of her scars, but all her limbs and extremities are still attached, even after the Army and India took their respective pieces out of her. She’d rather stay that way. Fern has to agree with that. She does agree with that, and Bastia strokes the place Jim touched over and over, trying to take away the sickness of it. 

They are almost asleep—or at least almost unconscious—when there is a double knock on their door. Bastia jerks awake, a cry trembling in the back of her throat because there is no one but Jim in the building and anyway he always announces himself like that. And it is an announcement, not a request to enter; Jim will come in whether she likes it or not. 

Fern is a snarling ball of rage at the end of the bed, standing on her hind paws with every tooth bared. Jim sticks his head around the door and sees her, and starts to laugh, light and cheerful and terribly, terribly pleased with himself. 

“Isn’t she a caution?” he drawls, and slides into the room. Bastia’s never seen Jim in anything less than a suit, but here he is in loose drawstring trousers and an A-line, barefoot, and there is Kesh around his shoulders like a necklace, or a scarf. She isn’t terribly big, perhaps two feet of curling body, but she’s a bright orange-yellow overlaid with red. Even if Jim hadn’t made it very clear she was poisonous, Bastia thinks she would know. 

“They eat their own kind, you know.” Jim raises a hand and strokes Kesh’s scales, and goes on, “African bush vipers. But they are _terribly_ pretty.” 

Kesh hisses, and she sounds so precisely like Jim in a strop that Bastia wraps her arms around herself, palms pressed against her ribs. Fern drops to all fours, ears flat back against her skull, clearly fighting the desire to get as low as possible, to submit. 

“Oh calm down.” Jim puts out an arm and Kesh flows down it to hang off his wrist. “Both of you. I’m not going to do anything...” he pauses as if weighing his words, head a little on one side. “Untoward. You can’t blame a man for wanting to touch such a handsome creature, Bastia.” 

“You’re sick.” She says it without emotion, nails digging into her own skin through her shirt. Most nights she sleeps bare but part of Bastia was expecting him, and she doesn’t think she could have faced the boss without the thin barrier of cloth. 

“Aren’t I just?” Jim shifts from foot to foot, looking around the room. “I like what you’ve done with the place, pet. Very spartan. Very clean. And you know how _fond_ I am of guns as a decorative touch.” He grins at her, all teeth, and begins prowling around the space, which Bastia has never bothered to personalize past a gun mount and a place to hang her knives, but not before leaving Kesh to coil around the bedpost. Fern backs up three steps. 

“Really, Bastia. We’ve already said we’re not going to do anything.”

Another awful sickening jolt because that voice is female, and low, and unfamiliar. Fern almost moans, and drops to her belly. Bastia gathers her up without thinking about it; Jim sniggers, and angles back towards the bed. He reaches for Kesh with both hands and she curls around his fingers in a way that is somehow deeply lewd, and rubs the top of her head against the ball of his thumb. 

“Interesting, that you’re still here.” Jim sits on the end of the bed; Bastia pulls her knees up, Fern sandwiched between them and her body. Fern who would usually yip and growl and struggle away. They are clinging to each other like they haven’t clung since they were small. And yet they are still here. Of course they are still here. Bastia licks her lips, and Jim _hums._ And then he reaches out and taps her ankle through the covers. “Or perhaps not. I told you to calm down, Colonel. We’re not going to bite you. Well.” Jim lowers his eyelashes, which are long, and dark, and looks at her through them. “ _She’s_ not going to.” 

His touch vibrates up the bones of her leg, through flesh and into Fern, who makes a low snarl that rises and falls like a boat on waves. Jim laughs, and Bastia strokes her daemon’s back until she quiets. Some of the horror has gone out of both of them, because Jim has made no move towards Fern, nor Kesh (curled again around Jim’s neck) towards Bastia. 

“Come now, Bast.” This again, the fucker, and she can feel the familiar exasperation with Jim’s delight in nicknames start to eat away at the bottom of her disgust and anger. “There’s no need to be coy.” A little pause, tongue flickering out to wet his lips, the same way his daemon tastes the air. “Surely you understand what I’m driving at, pet.”

Bastia has no idea what he is talking about, and then Fern makes a little startled grunt and disengages herself from her human to edge towards where Kesh is coiled and Bastia _knows._ “I’m gay, Jim,” she says, and readjusts to sit cross-legged. Jim makes a dismissive noise. He doesn’t touch her, just watches his daemon rear herself up a little to lean towards Fern. 

“Irrelevant. Sexuality is a complex spectrum and the likelihood of you being a hard six on the simplest possible scale is exceedingly small.” He tweaks the end of Kesh’s tail; Bastia puts her hand into Fern’s ruff. “And anyway, darling, it’s never stopped _me_ from doing exactly what I want.” Jim giggles and Bastia knows, she just fucking _knows_ he is about to make a pun. “Or who.” Bastard. 

Kesh rocks back and forth, hypnotic; both Bastia and Fern have their eyes fixed on the sinuous sway of her. Almost without her willing it, Bastia begins to ease, just a little, and Jim keeps talking, that smooth accented lilt. “I’m not going to _force_ you into anything, Bastia, but I think I made my interest in you—in the pair of you—quite clear this morning.”

She glances up at that, but it’s hard when her daemon is so focused elsewhere. Jim isn’t even looking at her, his attention on Fern and the way she is easing forward paw by paw, his voice a low roll. “You’re such a _good_ employee. Perfect shot, couldn’t be better if your girl was a peregrine, and the way you really _commit_ to the hands-on work is a treat to watch.” His pitch drops down the octave; Bastia shivers, her eyes dragging back to Kesh, leaning out her blunt little head. “And I have been watching. Never think I haven’t been, darling, there are eyes everywhere, business is after all business, but let me tell you I consider it a perk of the _job_ to watch you take a man down.”

Kesh’s nose touches the underside of Fern’s chin. Bastia can taste the shock of contact in the palms of her hands, the muscles of her groin—a scaling-down of the way Jim’s hand felt, stroking over her daemon’s head. Jim hums, teeth-grating. His eyes are heavy-lidded and very dark, and now he is looking at her. Bastia generally tries to avoid being the focus of Jim’s gaze because it always makes her feel—exposed. Cracked open, veins showing and bones stripped bare. 

She realizes now that he has never really looked at her, not with the full force of eyes with pupils blown, irises obliterated. Bastia thinks for one wild moment that he knows when Fern settled, the exact moment and day, and the reason she is a ratel, why she is so much bigger and broader than any other honey badger Bastia has ever seen, and why they had to kill the tiger—

Bastia wants to roll over, bare her neck and show her belly. Kesh is twining the entire back half of her body around Fern’s left forepaw, sliding the rest through the thick fur at her withers, tongue flickering out to touch her ear. 

“All that blood,” says Jim, so soft it seems to stroke her collarbones, the skin of her cheek, and she realizes he has been speaking the whole time. “Like you’d been painted with it, and weren’t you the _sweetest_ sight?” His fingers brush her wrist. “I wanted to _lick_ every bit of it off you. From between your fingers and the crease of your hip.” Jim raises her hand to his mouth and drags his tongue over her palm like punctuation. Fern is panting lightly, Kesh loose-wound about her neck. “Such a good girl,” he murmurs against her. “So _destructive._ So rough. Tell me, Bastia, are you a femme in the sheets, or are you just as brutal in bed...?”

Bastia thinks she wants to jerk away but Fern is not moving, has no apparent intent to move. Instead she sets her shoulders back and lifts her chin. “I told you I’m gay,” she says and it sounds like a frail excuse, even to her, because Jim is nothing so simple as male or female. He is fucking _inevitable_ , like monsoon weather or a microburst, all thunder and wind and rain so hard Bastia cannot see, and he is laughing. His fingers are on her neck, and Fern is making the soft fond grunts Bastia remembers from when they were still with Priya, back before they went to war. She can all but see Priya’s daemon lying with his paws together and his great eyes half shut, purring, the twitch of his striped tail, and Fern sidling up to him—

Bastia blinks, and Jim is very close. “Your move,” he says, soft. “I don’t want anyone saying I _forced_ you, pet.”

 Even Kesh has stopped moving, her head turning to look at Bastia while Fern makes a small disgruntled sound and says to her human do you really think there is more than one way for this to go? And haven’t we been half-fascinated by him since we started? And then unspoken but implied, what Bastia will barely admit to herself and so Fern cannot say out loud, _Isn’t this what you want?_

The breath in her lungs trembles. Jim is waiting with his head bent over her palm, looking up at her through his eyelashes, and suddenly Bastia’s hand is in his hair. She doesn’t mean to, not entirely, but then Jim’s eyes flutter shut for a moment and she can’t make herself let go. It is such a fucking rush, to touch him. To feel something hot and mad pulsing beneath her fingers. Bastia pets at him, helpless; Fern has dropped to her hindquarters and lifted one forepaw to hold Kesh close. 

“Come on, Bastia,” he breathes, and she fists her hand in his hair and _yanks._ The noise Jim makes goes straight through her; Bastia’s mouth is at his neck, first licking a line up his jugular and then biting. He tastes like clean blood, hot metal, and he writhes beneath her and it is so goddamn _sweet._ Fingers wrap around Bastia’s throat—she strains into them, pressing until her breath is almost cut off, teeth still fixed in Jim’s skin. They will rip each other to pieces, claws in the flesh; she can hear Fern making a noise halfway between a snarl and a growl, the thump of Kesh’s body against the bed. Jim twists. Bastia yelps.

She is pinned with her hands above her head, and she can feel the twin pinpricks of Kesh’s fang just barely touching Fern’s skin. It’s heady, and Bastia wants to _fight,_ wants to buck up against Jim’s body. She could toss him if she wanted to. Jim is a tiny bastard; Bastia has a full twenty centimeters and nearly twenty kilograms on him. Instead she arches up against his hips, feeling the press of his cock hard against her. There’s a moment where she wants again to twist away, where she is _terrified,_ and Fern catches her panic, wrenches away from the viper to pant and bare her teeth. Her voice is ragged, Bastia, wait—

Jim reaches out even as she speaks, keeping Bastia pinned with one hand, quieting Kesh with the other. His mouth moves against her neck below her ear. “Don’t be silly, pet, I’m not going to fuck you like _that_.” He sounds almost disdainful. Jim’s fingers drop to her hip, to her thigh, and then they are sliding between her legs. Bastia gasps. Her hands clutch at nothing, even though he doesn’t do anything except hold her. 

“Deep breaths,” he advises, eyes sparking with amusement, and licks her jawline. “I know this is _new_ to you, pet. Not going to hurt you.” A contemplative pause. “Unless you ask, of course. And I do think you _will_ ask. In time.”

“Bastard.” But Bastia tilts her head so he has more access to her neck. Jim presses a little harder into her clit through her boxers; she rocks against his hand, eyes almost shut. “Yes,” he says, matter-of-fact, and nips at her. Bastia can feel the thin skin of her neck starting to purple almost as soon as his teeth release; the idea of being bruised by Jim Moriarty, of wearing his mark as she puts a bullet into a target, makes her almost giddy. It shouldn’t. She knows it shouldn’t, the way she knows Fern should not be sprawled against the mattress with a snake binding her forelegs loosely together, hind paws braced against a sinuous body. 

It’s sick and it’s awful and Bastia does not think of herself as getting hard but she is _aching._ Jim is making needy little noises into her shoulder, and when she shifts up against him he begins to rut against her thigh. Bastia catches her breath, twists her wrists in his grasp.

“Ah,” says Jim, and how the fuck can those skinny fingers grip like iron— “I wouldn’t. You just lie back, darling, and I’ll take _care_ of you.” He strokes her, long and smooth, and Bastia makes a small sound, head falling back against the pillows. It’s been a long time, a _long_ time, and she wants. Jesus fuck but she wants. 

His mouth tastes like gunsmoke. 

The kiss is more of a shock than anything since Kesh’s scales sliding against her arm; Bastia has no time to react to it before his fingers slip beneath the band of her pants, pressing into wet slickness in a way that is both curious and exasperatingly clinical. Jim’s tongue flicks against her lips. She opens her mouth without thinking, and suddenly he is releasing her wrists. Before she fully registers her freedom Bastia has one hand tangled into his hair, the other raking nails over the pale skin revealed by his shirt riding up. Kesh and Fern are undulating together and she is _frantic,_ teeth scraping over Jim’s lower lip as he teases at her clit. 

“Fucking—harder, Jim, I’m not a delicate goddamn flower—” 

He’s giggling again, the little arse, he is actually _giggling_ , as Bastia twists and thrusts up, trying to fuck herself against Jim’s hand since he won’t sodding cooperate—his mouth on hers is a battleground, a fistfight, their lips swollen and one of his bleeding—

“Shall I slip a finger in, pet?” he drawls, and Bastia actually moans. Fern is licking long stripes up Kesh’s body, one paw pinning her down. Bastia pushes up against Jim, her mouth finding his again so that she doesn’t have to actually say _yes_ out loud, does not have to acknowledge that she wants to feel his hand twisting inside her, inevitable and appalling. Their bodies move together like a fucking earthquake, all destruction and violence, and then Jim gasps out against her mouth, “Say it, Moran. Tell me you want it or I’ll leave you here all wet and bothered, I would never do anything without _consent_.” 

The last word is a mocking lilt and she could gut him for it instead Bastia hisses, “Yes. Yes, you cunt, _fuck_ me or I’ll put a fucking bullet in that clever little brain,” and punches him hard in the ribs. 

Jim _moans_ , and Bastia can actually feels his cock twitch against her. She grins, savage. Fern is radiating glee, the words _Good to know_ electric in the air between them. Moriarty makes an offended little sound like can hear and bites at her lip so hard Bastia tastes blood, and she doesn’t care, she will let Jim rip her to shreds before she stops him. 

“Come on, Jim, come _on,”_ she says—pants—their daemons are a roll of fur and scale—Jim’s fingers inexorable against her clit—he is laughing like a fucking madman, bubbling and high into her mouth—

—he is inside her. Bastia blinks, blinks again. Jim crooks his fingers and her whole body arches. All she can do is fasten her teeth into the big muscle in his neck and push down onto him, helpless, need crashing through her in waves. His body is all wrong and yet familiar, masculine and delicate, and when her hands seek curves they find planes of bone and muscle: but his skin is soft. He intoxicates. Bastia is Jim’s creature, mind first and now body; his gun, his knife, his strong left hand. 

She can’t catch her breath, even; she can only grip Jim and grind down onto his hand. Jim is panting now too; both their daemons are whining soft in the back of their throats. Bastia digs her nails into Jim’s back; he twists his fingers inside of her and her yell is muffled by his skin between her teeth. He is still laughing. It seems likely that he will never stop laughing, even as aftershocks rock Bastia like a skiff caught in a gale and he slides his fingers out of her cunt. 

Jim does not sleep with her, doesn’t even remain in the bed for longer than it takes to stretch his hand and disengage their daemons. Bastia isn’t actually entirely sure he sleeps. He doesn’t say a word as he puts himself in order, but when his hand is already turning the doorknob, Jim turns and blows her a kiss. She returns it with a two-fingered salute as Fern crawls over her body to her customary place; Bastia can hear Jim giggling all the way down the hall. 

Well, then. There’s that. Bastia slings an arm over her daemon, readjusts her boxers, pulls the sheet over their bodies. Fern glances up at her, and “Not one fucking word,” says Bastia, before reaching out and flicking off the light. If they sleep more soundly than usual that night, and with less concern for how near Moriarty might be lurking, Bastia is prepared to blame it on pure exhaustion, nothing more. 

 

***

In the morning, in his office, Jim looks impeccable, Kesh is nowhere to be seen, and Bastia looks ravaged, despite the neat knee-length skirt and blazer over button-down, the careful lines of seam down the back of her stockings, the kitten heels. She has not bothered to even try to cover the marks Jim left; Bastia can tell he appreciates it by the tiny quirk of his mouth. 

There is a shadow of a bruise at the corner of that mouth. Fern shifts, just the tiniest bit, and Jim looks down at her. His grin widens, and Bastia curses them both. Can feel the blood leaving her brain. 

“ _Well_ now,” drawls Jim, and perches on the corner of his desk. It’s a staff-meeting morning. Jones is late. Mohamed was obnoxiously early, Bastia can tell by the smug little set of his chin; Xin perfectly on time. She _hates_ staff-morning meetings, hates the way they glare at her for her place at Jim’s side. 

“Shall we get started?”

There is a tiny little shock traveling up the whole of her left arm. Bastia fights the temptation to look while Jim talks about heists and political scandals and their targets for the week, but the sensation doesn’t go away, and Jim’s body is blocking the other three’s view of her.  

She looks down. 

Curled around her littlest finger is a red-orange questionmark of tail. 

 

**Author's Note:**

>  _Apprivoiser_ means "to tame".


End file.
